Two-time

MARGARET CASE MORGAN

Aclever woman's devious designs make at least one angle of a triangle too acute for comfort

• Nineteen thousand—nineteen thousand, five hundred—twenty thousand. Mona Ven-

neris, looking up from the writing-table, caught her reflection in the carved Florentine mirror that hung above it, and with the hand that held the silver pencil anxiously smoothed a line from her forehead. The doctor had told her that she must relax. But how was she to relax, how ever to escape from this small, impending doom of white paper that, terrible in its simplicity, lay before her?

She owed, to various shops, dressmakers and tradespeople, twenty thousand dollars. And she had six hundred and thirty-seven dollars in the bank.

It was not that her husband was ungenerous; her allowance was as large as that of any woman she knew. But she needed more, somehow, than they did. George couldn't seem to understand that her kind of beauty was difficult to dress, that her feet were too narrow for any but custom-made shoes, that her health required massage . . . there were a hundred things that made her different from other women—and more expensive.

• There had been a scene, the last time, over her unpaid bills, and George had paid them reluctantly. But he had said flatly, then, that if she ever got into debt again, she would have to get herself out of it alone.

"I shall put a notice in all the papers," George had said, starkly, "that I will not, in future, be responsible for my wife's debts." She remembered the ugly bone that sprang out in his jaw when he had told her that. She knew then that he meant it. And his contempt for her had been exceeded only by her contempt for him, which was simply colossal, being the contempt of an unreasonable woman for a reasonable man.

Frightened, she had tried to economize after that. But she found it impossible to make her life over entirely, and as she had organized it, it cost a great deal. So she had sunk once more, gradually, into the warm, falsely soothing sea of extravagance, and these bills were the result—not only bills, but grim, insinuating letters from wary merchants who probably, she thought, brooded darkly upon her as they lay awake of nights in their comfortable houses built by the customers who, unlike her, promptly paid their bills.

There was only one envelope that did not contain a request for payment; an advertisement from some obscure firm of jewelers, ironical in its suggestion that she buy more jewels. Mona pushed it aside. Obviously, she could not go to George again about her bills; his last announcement had been final. She wished now that she hadn't lied to him about so many of her accounts, pretending that they had been paid. Once in debt, she reflected, it was almost impossible to get clear of it unless one were allowed to start afresh; and now, in addition to the bills acquired since she and George had discussed it, last, there were those she had withheld from him, had lied to him about so that her fault might seem less. She had, too, pawned or sold as many of her jewels as she dared—forfeiting some of them to the pawnbrokers because she hadn't enough money to pay the interest.

Her thoughts, aching in her mind, turned to Jacques. He would want to help her. He was always sending her presents—an ancient ivory, a jewelled boudoir clock, a goddess in crystal—and there was, with each gift, the suggestion that he would like to give her more. But she had never dared ask him for money; his tender (and, to her) ridiculous reverence for her would have revolted at that.

Desperately, she raised her eyes to the mirror that hung above her. But it reflected none of the panic in her heart—only the cool thoughtfulness of her face; a face that had —in the high tension of the upper lip, the thin arch of the nostrils and the carriage of the dark head, held always high and a little back—an eager, receptive quality that was, in some strange, definite way, insatiable.

To-morrow she would be thirty-one, and she was very tired. It was curious, she often thought, that life, which begins so spontaneously and naturally should be maintained with success—for a woman, at least—only by a complicated structure of artifice, a series of spectacular poses.

She hid the bills hurriedly in a drawer, as her husband stood in the doorway. Mona closed her eyes over the impatience in them. Tall and a little gaunt, George was fond of describing himself as "fair-minded", and always came into a room as though he were looking for something unpleasant. This was through no fault of his own; it was the way his nose was built.

"Birthday present," he said briefly; "it's to-morrow, isn't it?"

• She saw that his hand was outstretched, and that from it a diamond necklace rippled like water in sunlight, swinging and sparkling as the warm, swift wings of colour from its depths flew over the mirror, the wall, the surface of the table.

"George, darling!" . . . but after the first moment of pleasure, her interest was entirely in the contemplation of the necklace and not at all in George. She could at no time think amiably of a man who admired her so little.

But the necklace was beautiful. He clasped it around her throat, and dropped a kiss, as brief and as direct as an incision on the top of her head.

"That's for being a good girl, and paying all your bills," he said, peacefully; then added, his eyebrow suddenly acute, "they are all paid?"

"Of course, George!" She lied to him so automatically that it did not even interrupt her absorption in the necklace.

He was looking at himself in the glass, leaning close, flattening the hair at his temple, feeling his jaw as though he had just invented it. "Are we dining home to-night?"

Mona turned to him swiftly, her hand still at her throat. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I promised to dine out to-night. ... I thought you'd be playing bridge, or something. . . ."

"That's all right. Who are you going out with—Jake?"

"His name is Jacques, dear."

• He was turning the pages of a magazine

on the table. "His name is Jacob Rice, and I'll bet his wife calls him Jake. I don't see—" he was speaking slowly now, apparently interested in the magazine. "I don't really see why you have to go to dinner with him every time he asks you."

She looked at him sharply. "Well, I don't have to—but he's so nice, I hate to hurt his feelings. And his wife will never go anywhere —she's simply impossible." She laughed ungracefully, moving the crystal bottles on her dressing table.

George put the magazine down. "Well. Have a good time." He waved a thin, vague hand at her, and was gone.

Alone, Mona put up her hand again to feel the rich frost of diamonds at her throat. But her face was dark with discontent. If only George had given her the money instead!

She dared not sell the necklace, nor replace it with an imitation. George was cleverer than she, she reflected, when she had dressed and her maid was holding the chinchilla wrap —still unpaid for—that would accent the devious simplicity of her long black velvet gown. Even if Jacques were to give her an expensive birthday present, she would not dare sell that either, for fear of being discovered. Her hand shook with nervousness as she caught up her evening bag, a crisp circle of rhinestones. A white card, brushed from the table, fluttered to the floor, and Mona looked at it vaguely. Then she smiled, slowly. But it was not until she was in the taxi that was taking her to meet Jacob Rice that she unclasped the diamond necklace from her throat and hid it in a pocket of the rhinestone bag.

Mona's deprecations were always pretty to watch—small, perfect gestures, made of swiftly curving brows and a pensive circle of the mouth. Now she swayed like a flower toward Jacob Rice, sitting at a table for two in a restaurant just ugly enough to be the smartest in New York. "But you mustn't think of giving me a birthday present, Jacques!" she was saying. "You have given me so many beautiful things, and there's nothing I want now, except . . ."

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"Except? Except?" The plump, neat contours of Jacob Rice trembled with eagerness, and his voice poured thickly from his throat like honey from a spoon. "Whatever it is, you shall have it, then. For is it not thirty-one years ago to-morrow that my blossom was born?" He sat back and clasped his hands romantically.

Mona allowed herself a moment of acute, private distaste; then she smiled. "Well, it's only that I know of a dealer in very rare jewels who has a marvelous bargain, a diamond necklace. I've seen it—and of course, if you were to buy it for me, Jacques, I could tell my husband it wasn't real, or something—that part could be easily arranged. But—" She paused, and permitted a gentle, selfless melancholy to dwell briefly in her eyes.

"His name?" Jacob Rice was holding a fat gold pencil briskly above a memorandum pad.

"Jacques, you mustn't!"

"Nonsense! You want this necklace, I want to buy it for you. I will go to-morrow morning."

"No," she said hastily. "I'd go in the afternoon, if I were you. I believe," she added slowly, "that he is seldom in before noon."

"Afternoon, then." He wrote the name she gave him on the pad, and put it in his pocket. "To-morrow night you dine with me, and I will give it to you."

Mona hesitated. "I don't think I ought to dine with you two nights in succession," she objected, remembering George, "but I can lunch with you day after to-morrow. You can give it to me then."

It was with something' less than her usual aversion that she watched him drink romantically out of the glass where her lips had touched it.

Mona Venneris sat alertly, next morning, in the office of Mr. Loewenstein the jeweler. On the desk between them the diamond necklace sparkled, debonair in the morning sun.

"You understand perfectly, Mr. Loewenstein?" she was saying. "You are to sell this necklace to Mr. Jacob Rice, who will call this afternoon— and to no one else. He will pay you thirty thousand dollars for it. Of this amount, I am to have twenty thousand dollars—you are to keep the rest. I have," she added, smiling prettily, "no way of proving to you my perfect right to do this, unless you take my word that the necklace is mine to sell."

The sympathetic eye of the jeweler dwelt briefly upon the slim lines of caracul that lay tranquil upon her narrow shoulders. He bowed.

"I should like you, of course, to give me a receipt for the necklace. And, of course, it will not be necessary to mention my name in the transaction." She rose, pulling the mink collar high about her chin.

Jacob Rice, alone in his room six hours later, watched the necklace tremble and shine in the glow from a lamp sleek with amethyst quartz and amber silk. The necklace was his—he had paid Loewenstein thirty thousand dollars for it. But the delight in Jacob's light blue eyes was not only the joy of possession, nor even the delicate privilege of pleasing Mona. It was the excitement of having made a good bargain. For, upon leaving Loewenstein, he had stopped shrewdly at another jeweler's to have the diamonds appraised; and had been told that they were worth sixty-five thousand dollars. So now, his heart closed warm and tight over the delicious secret of his bargain, he brooded happily over the diamonds as he dressed for dinner. Around him the room lay complacent in a rich design of tapestries, silver and mahogany the colour of wine, and its air was faintly traced with pungent odours from the kitchen. It had never seemed curious to Jacob that his home, impeccable on Park Avenue, should always smell definitely of good meat and fresh vegetables cooking. He liked it, as he liked the laconic and comfortable presence of his wife.

It occurred to him, as he placed the necklace carefully in a drawer, to regret that he could not, under the circumstances, tell Jenny about it.

Mona, at luncheon with Jacob Rice the next day, was no longer deprecating. She was eager, now, and very charming.

"My birthday present, darling?" she suggested, when she had taken off her gloves and lit a cigarette. "Have you got it?"

"Of course, I have got a birthday present! Would I forget a birthday present for the most beautiful girl in all the world?"

She looked up sharply, through a thin spray of cigarette-smoke. "A birthday present? But surely, you bought the necklace for me?"

His hands curved in a vast gesture of distaste. "Xhat necklace was., not suitable to my little flower—too, flashy, too vulgar. . . ."

"But you did buy it! Loewenstein told me—'' she stopped abruptly.

"Well, yes ... I bought it." Jacob hesitated, then leaned confidentially across the table. "I will tell you the truth, Mona, because you are so good and so honourable yourself that I know you will understand it. I got to thinking, Mona, after I brought the necklace home last night . . . about my wife. I have neglected her." His plump hand fell heavily, contritely upon the table-cloth. "I have not given her all I could, and she has been a good wife. She has never complained. And I got to thinking, Mona, about the necklace, that it would be a good investment for her if—well, if anything happened. And then she had black bean soup for dinner, just for me because I like it, and so ... I gave her the necklace, Mona."

Black bean soup . . . through the panic of Mona's mind, the ludicrous phrase ran shrieking like a thin hot wire. Jacob was smiling now, and searching in his pocket.

"But I have for my blossom a birthday present as delicate and fine as herself. For her tiniest finger, a pinkyring . . . so!"

And tenderly, he slipped upon her finger a platinum ring, set with a fairly good pearl.